Apple may or may not be working on an “Apple Car,” but Intel is interested in such technology. The company has announced a $15.3 billion acquisition of Israeli automotive technology company Mobileye N.V.
The $63.54-per-share deal is expected to close within the next nine months, Intel said. Shares of Mobileye jumped nearly 32% on the news.
Mobileye develops vision-based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) providing warnings for collision prevention and mitigation. Mobileye N.V. headquarters and main R&D centre is located in Jerusalem, Israel, operating under the company name Mobileye Vision Technology Ltd.
Intel says self-driving cars will represent a $70 billion market by the year 2030. Each self-driving car on the road will generate 4 terabytes of data per hour by the year 2020, thecompany estimates.
“This massive amount of data requires all of Intel’s assets to provide the cost-effective high performance solutions our customers need,” CEO Brian Krzanich wrote in a memo to employees. “The addition of Mobileye to our family provides the data path to our computing solutions becoming the intelligent set of eyes that will allow a vehicle to see and define the world around it.”
